Category: Moon

By David E. Bowker and J. Kenrick Hughes, NASA SP-206, 1970Download document (12 MB PDF) Online version (LPI)
During 1966 and 1967 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft to obtain photographs from orbit of the surface of the Moon. The reconstructed photographs and support data are now on file at the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The purpose of this Atlas is to present a selection of these photographs which provides essentially complete coverage of the near side and far side of the Moon in greater detail than any publication now in existence.

This image (LO_IV 4094) of the Moon’s south pole was taken by Lunar Orbiter IV on 16 May 1967 at 16:00:08 GMT. This image is identified as Frame 4094,high resolution subframe h1. Large craters visible in this image include Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott.
A larger web version of this image is online here. A full, high resolution version of this image is online here at the NLSI.

China has published its first map of the entire lunar surface. The map was created using imagery obtained by the China’s Chang’e 1 lunar orbiting spacecraft. Larger image here. We hope to produce something like this as well once all of our Lunar Orbiter images have been recovered and enhanced.

Lunar Images From Chandrayaan-1“This is the picture of moon’s surface taken from lunar orbit by Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft’s Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) on November 15, 2008. Taken over the polar region of the moon, the picture shows many large and numerous small craters. The bright terrain on the lower left is the rim of 117 km wide Moretus crater.”

This graphic compares the enhanced resolution of the LOIRP image and the highest resolution image available online at LPI. This image was taken on 23 August 1966 and restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA Ames Research Center. Larger image. Credit: NASA/LOIRP